Underlying Bradbury's futuristic writing is an enormous nostalgia for the simplicity of wholesome, early twentiethcentury, small-town life. This nostalgia infuses both The Martian Chronicles and many of the author's other works. His immigrants to Mars are usually looking for a place to call their own—a cozy home and a bit of land. When they reach Mars they immediately set about turning it into another, better version of their place of origin. In "The Off Season," Sam Parkhill thinks that he has achieved his lifelong dream by opening up a roadside hot dog stand. Other new immigrants set up luggage stores, or plant maple and elm trees.

Bradbury suggests that nostalgia can, at times, be dangerous. In "The Third Expedition," a party of astronauts lands on Mars and discovers an innocentlooking town apparently inhabited by deceased family members—mothers, brothers, grandparents, all of them...